“A magnificent attempt to recapture the sense, so prevalent at the end of the 19th century, that the world was finished, explored and done. The responses of the three creative men on whom Rosalind Williams focuses have strong resonances for anyone who worries about today’s Anthropocene era.”

Economist, a 2013 Book of the Year in Science and Technology

“One of the most fascinating books I’ve read this year, deftly drawing together the themes of utopian ambition, technological change, and a visionary sense of escape.”

Philip Hoare | Telegraph

“Captivating and unsettling. . . . [This] is a book that manages to be densely researched, accessible, and disarmingly polemical. Williams’s triplet of complex and neglected figures, writing ‘through the rolling apocalypse of their time, at once deciphering and prophesying it,’ reminds us that ‘we are not the first to live in this historical condition’ of intense ecological concern, and encourages us to think seriously about our modern-day duties. The Triumph of Human Empire will be a thought-provoking book for anyone concerned with the imagination of the ‘Anthropocene’ and how it was formed.”

Tom Wright | Times Higher Education Supplement

“Williams’s perceptive readings, fluent writing, immense erudition, and engaging voice make her book an irresistible, endlessly instructive pleasure.”

Felipe Fernandez-Armesto | Times Literary Supplement

“Millions of people had their ideas about technology, nature, and the human condition influenced by these men. If Ms. Williams introduces one more reader to the remarkable worlds of Morris’s News from Nowhere, or Verne’s Invasion of the Sea, that is justification enough for her insightful book.”

J. R. McNeill | Wall Street Journal

“Prodigious in scope. . . . Those interested in the cross-disciplinary potential of the history of science and technology will find this book of interest. Recommended.”

A. M. Bain | Choice

"An engaging book that will interest scholars of nineteenth-century technology and the environment, as well as those concerned with science’s influence on literature."

Science Direct

“[A] well-researched and valuable book.”

Clifford Cunningham | Sun News Miami

“Engaging, highly informative, and entertaining, The Triumph of Human Empire addresses issues of crucial current importance—the impact of humans on the environment; the dangerous pace of late modernity; the political and psychological consequences of globalization, high-speed communications, and industrial capitalism—through lively and colorful biographies of important literary figures, presented here from a novel perspective. Rosalind Williams follows the advice of the authors she discusses—of finding the right balance between factual detail, narrative drive, and human interest—yet presents a strikingly original and timely synthesis of literary history, history of technology, and environmental history.”

John Tresch, author of The Romantic Machine

“As in her previous work, Rosalind Williams uses literature to explore the monumental shifts in human understanding of our place in nature—in this case, the realization in the late nineteenth century that human beings had physically occupied the planet and would now be re-engineering it according to their own thoughts and desires. Her writing is deeply thoughtful, particular, and well researched, and it is relevant for the troubling scientific and technological challenges of today.”

Alan Lightman, author of Einstein's Dreams